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Toshio Maeda began reading manga when he was 5 or 6 years old, including American comics such as Mighty Mouse, Spider-Man and Batman. He was also a reader of all genres of literature and has said that he read more than 10,000 books before he was 20 years old.[6]

At 16 Maeda left Osaka to go to Tokyo as an assistant to a professional cartoonist. He became interested in manga for adults to avoid all the strictures, sexual, political and religious, that were placed on manga for children.[6]

Early in his career, with the likes of Evil Spirit Island and Ashita-e Kick Off, he only provided the illustrations while someone else wrote the text for the manga.

Maeda's most well-known series, Urotsukidōji, came out in 1986 and gained popularity abroad. The Erotic Anime Movie Guide claimed that "No other title apart from Akira has been so influential in the English-language market."[7] Maeda was working for an adult magazine at the time and wanted to create something different in terms of erotica.[6]

Maeda is credited with the proliferation of the tentacle rape genre mostly on the reputation of the animated versions of his manga, but he did not implement the use of the "tentacle" as an erotic device until the 1989 Demon Beast Invasion. Although Urotsukidoji is often labeled as being the first tentacle rape manga, it was in fact only featured the anime version. Maeda has mentioned that since portraying genitals was illegal in Japan, artists would use any trick they could to get by the censors and he could say that a creature's tentacle was not a penis.[6] Maeda is proud of his role in popularizing the genre and in a blog interview stated that he would like "Tentacle Master" inscribed on his tombstone.[8]

Maeda was a Guest of Honor at the Big Apple Anime Fest (BAAF) held in New York City in October 2001. He was praised as "the most influential erotic manga artist in Japan" and Urotsukidoji was described as " the foundation for the entire 'erotic-grotesque' genre of Japanese anime". Maeda was the Keynote Speaker at the BAAF Symposium and introduced a retrospective of his work.[9][10]

A motorbike accident in 2001 left Maeda with limited ability in his drawing hand but he continued to use his computer to create characters and write scripts.[7] In 2003, he was planning his contributions to a Japanese woman's hentai magazine and learning to look at eroticism from a woman's point of view.[6]

In addition to erotic horror, Maeda has done manga in other genres, including sex comedy, BDSM-themed genres, and books targeted at younger readers. He also sometimes draws mecha.[citation needed]

As of September 2010, Toshio Maeda has opened his official website, with the Tentacle club, where users can sign up and view his full length manga for a small monthly fee of 500 yen. Toshio has also made the opportunity available to the public to come stay at his apartment and have the opportunity to discuss manga, anime and Japan in general with him, over a beer for a small fee, together with a tour of Akihabara and various otaku hot spots in Tokyo.[11]

In 2016 Toshio Maeda appeared in the British Horror film Spidarlings directed by Salem Kapsaski.